On Monday, 7 April 2025, in the Gerola room of the Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento, the book "Spazi cólti: giardini, parchi e plante nella storia d 'Occidente", the volume recently published by the Fondazione Museo storico del Trentino and edited by Fabrizio Fronza and Rodolfo Taiani, will be presented.
Gardens and parks narrate a composite and multi-millennial story made up of spaces, theories, natural elements, architecture, but above all of men and women who have designed its articulation according to the different religious, political, social, cultural or health-related visions that have accompanied the evolution of the idea of nature and the attitudes matured towards it.
The publication that will be presented in Trento on 7 April constitutes the catalogue of the exhibition Spazi colti: i giardini nella storia d 'Occidente, set up at Villa Paradiso within the Parco delle Terme di Levico by the Fondazione Museo storico del Trentino and the Service for Occupational Support and Environmental Enhancement of the Autonomous Province of Trento.
Like the exhibition, the volume also aims to highlight the peculiarities of ‘gardens’ and ‘parks’, that is, those cultivated spaces, mostly fenced, which differ from each other essentially in size, larger in the case of parks, but also in the stylistic choices adopted by those who thought, set and created them.
The annotations on gardens and historical parks proposed in "Spazi colti" focus on the long-term evolution of styles and the very concept of the garden from an ideal place to a real place. This transformation is presented following the different historical eras in the awareness that the situations described are much more complex than the categorizations used and the inevitable ‘simplifications’ that have been used allow us to articulate.
An editorial initiative that helps to strengthen the conviction of how essential it is to preserve places such as parks and gardens and at the same time make them alive to safeguard another aspect that can be traced back to them, namely the care of beauty. A cure that – as Maurizio Mezzanot states in the Introduction to the volume - "deserves consideration not only for the purpose of improving the quality of life itself, but even more for the purpose of acquiring a conscious attitude towards the natural environment and its respect".
At the meeting on 7 April, after the institutional greetings and the introduction by Franco Marzatico, Umst director of the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage and Activities, Maurizio Mezzanotte, director of the Service for Employment Support and Environmental Enhancement and Giuseppe Ferrandi, director of the Fondazione Museo storico del Trentino, the authors Fabrizio Fronza and Rodolfo Taiani will meet Elena Libardi, head of the Municipal Library of Levico Terme.
The authors
Fabrizio Fronza, curator of the historic parks of Levico and Roncegno, works for the Autonomous Province of Trento. He has been a master's lecturer on landscape and garden issues for the University of Tuscia, IUAV (Venice) and various training institutes. At the centre of his interests are issues related to the management of parks and gardens and the relationship between garden and landscape. In this context, it collaborates with various associations and subjects of the Italian and foreign business and production reality.
He has contributed with his own essays and publications published by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage of Trentino and the Benetton Studi Ricerche Foundation.
He writes in landscape, natural resources and garden magazines.
Rodolfo Taiani has worked, through studies, personal training and professional stages, on archives and libraries but also on the history of health in the modern and contemporary age from several points of view.
He has curated multiple research projects, publications and exhibition initiatives and has worked at several institutions: among them the National Centre for Manzoni Studies in Milan, the Library of the University of Trento, the Historical Museum in Trento and finally the Fondazione Museo storico del Trentino, where he was responsible for the library and publishing sector until 2024.
He directs the semiannual journal of historical studies Archivio trentino.
